Biden Bailing on Fox News Super Bowl Interview is Bad, Actually, and Probably Wasn’t Done For the Reasons You Think

President Joe Biden won’t be doing an interview with Fox News ahead of Super Bowl LVII. Is it because Fox News is too evil to be fair? Is it because Biden is too old to do well? Is it because of conditions, scheduling, or a disagreement on venue or the particular Fox property?

Nah.

On Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted the news that there would be no televised tête-à-tête, saying “Fox Corp has asked for” an interview with little-known streaming service Fox Soul to be cancelled.

But that is not the whole story. In fact the bickering and arguing about who cancelled whom is extensive.

The main thing to know is that as late as this morning the fate of the interview was unknown, but reports that Fox News had lost “hope” ran wild. It wasn’t until Jean-Pierre’s tweet that hell broke loose.

Now the interview on Sunday — which has not yet been referred to as a Super Bowl interview and we do not know whether will be carried during the broadcast — is back on.

For now, at least. And not with Fox News.

CNN’s Oliver Darcy said he doesn’t understand why the White House is playing games here when they could just instead explain their reasons for avoiding Fox News, but that’s a rhetorical observation I think. Because it’s pretty obvious what game they are playing and why.

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher noted that White House counsel spox Ian Sams just this week put out a memo describing House GOP investigations as “the Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee.”

That’s the messaging the White House bitterly clings to in almost all things, with Biden routinely bashing Fox News as most of the media and its online cheer squad gleefully join in.

Taking it as a hypothetical, absent identifiers, it becomes a bit more clear. Imagine a president accustomed to favorable press and demonstrably averse to tough questions who wants to avoid being put in a tight spot but knows it will look like conspicuous avoidance to cancel a traditional outing outright. What might that president do to avoid that conundrum? What might he or she do to cleanly dodge that singularly tough outfit altogether?

We heard over and over during Donald Trump’s White House stay that he “demonized” the press, avoided tough questions, or even was straight up afraid to face tough interviewers like, um, Don Lemon.

But that’s not a theory the press would float for Biden dodging Fox News. Fingers will point at the hosts or the slant, the coverage or the party, but never to Biden just being afraid of a tough question. Despite his voluminous body of work in the “yelling at reporters” genre.

Ask yourself if there is anywhere in all of media that Biden would get a grilling like Republicans can expect any day of the week. One like this.

But of course, that wouldn’t even be the case. Because if Joe Biden sat down with the very professional and well-respected Bret Baier, for example, for the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview. It might have been more like the Margaret Brennan interview of Donald Trump before Super Bowl LIII, rather than the Hannity interview of Trump before Super Bowl LIV, but it would not have been like that Chuck Todd clip linked above.

The fact that Fox has critical or even very critical coverage of Biden is not a reason any media outlet should accept as a reason for him not to do it. And the lack of critical coverage of Biden on most of the entire rest of the media — except inasmuch as they criticize him from the left — is a very good reason for him to do it.

CNN analyst Kirsten Powers on Friday said there is no “upside” in doing an interview with Fox News before the Super Bowl, “considering what Fox has become.” She was not persuaded by the argument that Biden could reach Americans he might not otherwise reach.

Again it raises the question of where he could go to be outside his partisan cocoon. But it also raises an even more pressing question.

Biden’s handlers and surrogates and fans are constantly talking about how sharp and focused he is, they fawn over his studly manhandling of the weak and pathetic Republicans, and how expertly he and KJP deal with the press and especially Peter Doocy of Fox News, who manages to ask tough questions in the briefing room without resorting to what we in the business call “Acosta antics.”

So one has to wonder what Kirsten Powers would say is the downside to doing the interview? If he’s so adept, if the bad guys are so obviously bad, what is the downside? That he’d show them up? Shouldn’t they embrace the opportunity for him to whoop ass, to show up Fox, to wrestle the beast and win?

If you buy their pre-emptive depiction of any Fox News interview as an exercise in evil then it seems a stark admission that he can’t handle the heat.

But don’t buy the depiction anyway. The interview would’ve been fine. Easy enough. He probably would have shared a laugh or two with whoever was conducting it, talked about the game some. It would’ve gone fine.

And that would be the worst outcome of all. Because what they are really trying to avoid is letting Fox News seem like news.

He wasn’t turning down the interview because people would see the real him, but because it would demystify their boogeyman. And THAT would be the biggest PR disaster of all.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.